George Clooney in Talks to Direct Coen Brothers’ Script ‘Suburbicon’

The Coen Brothers’ screenplay for Suburbicon has been in various levels of gestation for a little over a decade now, with George Clooney first voicing his interest in directing the project 10 years ago. Clooney’s had a great track record with Joel and Ethan Coen, and if there were anyone who doesn’t share the Coen name cut out to direct one of their screenplays, it’s most definitely Clooney, who is once again circling the project.

Deadline reports that Clooney is in talks to helm Suburbicon, which is now set up at TriStar with Joel Silver producing. Plot details are scarce, though it’s described as a 1950s-set noir similar to the Coens’ great Blood Simple. As Empire notes, Clooney first mentioned his interest in the project back in 2005, when he was working on The Good German with another frequent collaborator, Steven Soderbergh. Back then, Clooney described Suburbicon as a dark comedy:

I’m going to do a comedy with Joel and Ethan in around a year. I really like working with them and I like doing comedy with them. They offered me a part in Suburbicon a long time ago, and since then decided they have other projects they want to work on. So I called them up and said ‘How about me taking a spin at it?’ Because it’s a really interesting, really funny, very dark comedy.

Hardly surprising, since the Coen Brothers’ films are often a smart blend of dark, sharp humor and other genre elements.

Clooney has appeared in the Coen films O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, Burn After Reading, and more recently, the upcoming comedy Hail, Caesar! That film hits theaters on February 5, 2016. The actor has also had some luck with his own directing projects, including Good Night and Good Luck and the underrated The Ides of March. The last film he directed was the so-so The Monuments Men.